Thua Thien Hue, Vietnam

Vietnam is increasing local
rights to its forests, but institutions implementing this decentralisation still
rarely involve local people. Government strongly supports plantation and
agricultural development and has forbidden the practice of traditional shifting
cultivation.

In 2005,
a project to improve the livelihoods of forest-dependent people and at the same
time enhance sustainable management of forests was started in Central Vietnam,
Thua Thien Hue Province, in collaboration with
Tropenbos International Vietnam (TBI-V).
This project applied three different tools; MLA, Future Scenarios and
Payment for Environmental Services. This project is funded by A
Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC)

CIFOR’s contribution was to
(1) apply the MLA approach in the local socio-economic context, (2) provide
methods and information to better take account of local perceptions in land use
and conservation planning, (3) provide baseline data for biodiversity
conservation and (4) discuss the opportunities and constraints for conservation
institutions in the local context.

The focus of the study was Khe
Tran village in Thua Thien Hue province, in the buffer zone of a planned
conservation area. It has a strong presence of minority groups. The team
assessed these people’s perceptions of the importance of biological resources as
well as the role communities would like to play in forest management. This lead
to recommendations on how to involve them in protected area management.